Let us leave all curses, ridicule and swearings on Levon Altunyan aside and try to reply to a question with a cold head – should the antibiotics, psychoactive or hormonal drugs be sold by prescription or not? I am sure, they should not be in a free trade. However, it should be organized so that suchlike drugs, although via prescription, reach all the ones who have the need of them easily. Has the Ministry of Healthcare succeeded in organizing everything the way mentioned? No, it has failed to do it: the procedure has not been prepared for in advance and has been implemented extremely badly.
It is clear that in the near future Levon Altunyan is not going to be the Minister. People having ties with “Rosgosstrakh”, I think, will be sufficed, inasmuch as their competitor – Altunyan’s “Ingo Armenia”, will be deprived of a part of its payable clients. In my opinion, Altunyan in person will not be sad from that fact as well, because people having a character like him prefer free life more. (I am surprised how he has agreed on that position at all!) As a Minister he has made a few rough mistakes, as well as incautious expressions, and my attitude towards that person continues to remain positive despite that.
However, the issue is not personal, of course. Whoever becomes the Minister of Healthcare, s/he will be standing in front of a choice: either to give freedom to the pressure of the populists and interested persons and not to do anything, or to take sharp and not popular steps, limiting the quantity of the drugs being sold without prescription, taking strict measures against the people smoking in public places, enlarge the circles of preventive vaccinations, import digital system for registering illnesses encompassed. All that will have a rough response, but without that, we will remain in the present degraded condition and not only in the field of healthcare. It is another question how it is done, how it is organized. Here we, let me repeat myself, have very serious issues.
And in the end I want to refer to those who understand very well that suchlike steps are necessary. One should not encourage ignorance to hear the applauds of the crowd: “people, do not get vaccinated, they lie”, “smoke whenever you want to, let them think of their castles”, “the doctors do not have time to learn using computers”, “let people chew antibiotics”. It is pleasant to hear for a certain part of the public, of course. I do not know how much useful it is for the health.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
